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2. COUNCIL INQUIRY/MOTION TRACKING PROCESS PROCESSUS DE SUIVI DES DEMANDES DE RENSEIGNEMENTS ET DES MOTIONS DU
CONSEIL MUNICIPAL |
Committee
Recommendations
That Council approve
1. The
Formal Inquiry and Motion Tracking Process be adopted as outlined in this
report; and
2. Members Services Committee be tasked with identifying issues and recommending any process improvements for informal inquiries.
Recommandations
du Comité
Que le Conseil approuve :
1.
le processus de suivi des demandes
de renseignements et des motions officielles soit adopté tel qu’exposé dans le
présent rapport; et
2. le Comité des services
aux membres soit chargé de cerner les questions relatives aux demandes de
renseignements non officielles et de recommander, à ce sujet, des améliorations
au processus de suivi.
Documentation
1. City Manager’s report dated 27 May 2008
(ACS2008-CMR-OCM-0001).
Corporate Services and
Economic Development Committee
Comité des services organisationnels et du développement économique
and Council / et au Conseil
Submitted by/Soumis par : Kent Kirkpatrick,
City Manager/Directeur des services municipaux
Contact Person/Personne ressource : Leslie Donnelly, Deputy City
Clerk/Greffière adjointe
City
Clerk’s Branch/Direction du greffe
(613)
580-2424 x28857, leslie.donnelly@ottawa.ca
SUBJECT:
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OBJET :
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PROCESSUS DE SUIVI DES DEMANDES DE RENSEIGNEMENTS ET DES MOTIONS DU
CONSEIL MUNICIPAL |
That the Corporate Services and Economic Development Committee
recommend to Council that:
1. The
Formal Inquiry and Motion Tracking Process be adopted as outlined in this
report; and
2. Members Services Committee be tasked with identifying issues and recommending any process improvements for informal inquiries.
Que le Comité des services organisationnels et du développement économique recommande au Conseil que :
1. Le processus de suivi
des demandes de renseignements et des motions officielles soit adopté tel
qu’exposé dans le présent rapport; et
2. Le Comité des services
aux membres soit chargé de cerner les questions relatives aux demandes de
renseignements non officielles et de recommander, à ce sujet, des améliorations
au processus de suivi.
During the February 8, 2008 meeting of the Long-Range Financial Plan (LRFP) Sub-Committee, a number of issues were raised regarding the formal and informal inquiries directed to the administration by elected officials. Some of issues specifically identified included:
Similar issues were identified for Committee and Council motions.
As a result of the discussion, the City Manager, City Solicitor and City Clerk were tasked to develop and recommend clear and consistent guidelines for the inquiry and motion process, and report through the Corporate Services and Economic Development Committee with recommendations.
In response, staff is proposing protocols for Council’s consideration for the following three separate but related categories:
1. Formal Inquiries arising out of Standing Committees and Council;
2. Formal Motions approved by Standing Committee and/or Council; and
3. Informal Inquiries from members of Council to staff.
In each case, the recommended process attempts to incorporate clear accountabilities, ensure that staff are responsive to Councillors, that Councillors are aware of the resources required to respond to inquiries and that Council’s overall workplan and priorities are understood, without being unduly process-heavy or inflexible.
At the February 27, 2008 City Council meeting, Councillor Hunter further identified the need to formalize staff directions as part of the record of Committee and Council meetings, and this report also incorporates recommendations to address that issue.
DISCUSSION
1. Formal Inquiries arising out of Standing Committees and Council
The definition of a
"formal" inquiry is an inquiry which is filed in writing at a
Committee or Council meeting (Section
31 of the By-law No. 206-462 - A by-law of the City of Ottawa to govern the
proceedings of the Council and its Committees and to repeal By-law No. 2005-431
– i.e. the Procedure By-law - Reference Document 1).
It is a member
of Council's right to raise any matter to a Committee or Council that they wish
to raise. However, to be considered a
formal inquiry, it must be in accordance with the process set out in the Procedure
By-law.
The current process is managed by
the City Clerk's Branch through the City Council and Standing Committee
Coordinators. A written inquiry must be
submitted before the end of a Committee or Council meeting to be formally
raised and read into the record of the meeting minutes. Immediately following the meeting, the
Coordinator prepares the inquiry form and sends it to the appropriate Department
Head(s) and Branch Director(s) for response. Directions with respect to the distribution of the response to
the inquiry are noted in the form for action by the applicable department. Although a record of all inquiries and
responses are maintained and monitored by the City Clerk’s office, the
responsibility for responding to the inquiry and ensuring the Clerk’s office is
aware of the response rests with the assigned Branch Director and Department
Head.
In accordance with section 31 (3)
of the Procedure By-law, a quarterly report to Council is presented on
all outstanding inquiries.
While the majority of majority of
formal inquiries raised at Standing Committee and Council are responded to
within a reasonable amount of time, the concerns identified with the existing
process included:
To address these issues, staff
are recommending a change to the current inquiry intake process as follows:
All inquiries:
§
(i) a standard inquiry that can be responded to
using existing resources and information within a reasonable amount of time; or
§
(ii) a significant inquiry in terms of either
the subject matter of the inquiry and/or the implications for staff to prepare
a quality response within a reasonable amount of time.
Where an
inquiry can be responded to using existing resources and information within a
reasonable amount of time, the recommended process is:
1.
If the response can be ready for the next Committee/Council
meeting, the Branch Director will prepare the response in accordance with the
Department’s practices.
The response will be sent to the Councillor, copied to all members of Council
and the Committee/Council Co-ordinator, who will formally list the response
under correspondence on the Committee agenda.
2.
If the response will be ready for a future meeting, the Branch
Director will send a memo to the Councillor and the Committee/Council
Co-ordinator indicating when the response can be expected.
The Committee/Council Co-ordinator will note the deadline in the Inquiry
Tracking database. It is the
responsibility of the Branch Director to inform the Councillor and the
Co-ordinator if deadlines are going to be missed.
The response will be prepared according to the Department’s normal practice.
When ready, the response will be sent to the Councillor, copied to all
Councillors and the Committee/Council Co-ordinator, who will formally list the
response under correspondence on the Committee/Council agenda.
Where an
inquiry cannot be responded to using existing resources and information within
a reasonable amount of time, the inquiry would be deemed significant. The
recommended process for significant inquiries is:
1.
The Branch Director would prepare a memo to the Councillor,
copying Council and the Committee/Council Co-ordinator, outlining what would be
required for the inquiry to be answered. This would be listed on the next
Committee/Council Agenda as correspondence.
2.
If the Councillor wished the inquiry to proceed, s/he would
move the inquiry as a motion.
At the present time, all formal
inquiries and responses are located in a shared area accessible to applicable
staff in the City Clerk's Branch.
Staff understand the benefit of a centralized tracking system for formal
inquiries and are investigating an electronic process (connected to an
electronic agenda process) in collaboration with the Information Technology
Services Branch. In the interim,
access to all formal inquiries and responses will be expanded to include the
relevant staff in the Mayor's office, departmental offices and members of
Council and their staff.
2. Formal Motions approved by Standing Committee and/or Council
As with formal inquiries, Motions
must be tabled with the applicable committee or Council under the "Notice
of Motion" section. (Document 1 -
the Procedure By-law - Section 55)
At the following meeting, the Motion is located under the "Motions
of which Notice has Been Given Previously", at which time the City Manager
or the applicable Department Head must provide any relevant information with
regard to the impact and implications should the Motion be considered and
approved.
In accordance with Section 80 of
the Procedure By-law (Document 1), there are rules with respect to a
motion or recommendation to approve or direct the expenditure of funds or the
raising of revenue over and above an estimate or revenue measure previously
approved by Council.
On occasion, Motions are
considered by Committee and/or Council without first going through the Notice
of Motion requirement. In this case,
waiver of the rules of procedure is required.
Currently, there is no formal
process for tracking motions once they are approved. Each Department manages
their Committee/Council disposition,
normally through their advanced legislative agenda process. A record of all
motions exists only in meeting minutes, and the responsibility for acting on
motions rests with the assigned Branch Director and Department Head.
Some of the concerns identified
with the existing process included:
In addition, while the majority
of motions raised at Standing Committee and Council can be responded to within
a reasonable amount of time using existing resources, there are motions
approved by Council that will require enough resources to shift work already
approved in a branch workplan. There is currently no mechanism to address this
issue.
To address these issues, staff
are recommending a change to the current motion process as follows:
All motions:
Process for Motions Within
Existing Workplans
1.
The Branch Director
will review the motion and notify the Committee/Council Co-ordinator of
how and when the motion will be responded to (e.g. staff report by Fall 2008).
2.
The Co-ordinator will add this to the Inquiry/Motion Tracking
tool.
3.
The Branch Director will clearly tie the response to the
motion once final, notifying the Co-ordinator.
Process for Motions that
Cannot be Accommodated Within Existing Resources/Workplans
1.
The Branch Director/Department will notify the
Committee/Council Co-ordinator that the motion cannot be accommodated within
existing resources/workplans, and indicate that a White Paper will be provided
to the relevant Standing Committee/Council meeting within one month’s time,
ideally at the next meeting. This White Paper is not intended to generate a
reconsideration of Council’s intent. Rather, it should allow Council to
determine where this new priority fits within the context of all other
Branch/Departmental priorities in terms of timelines and resources.
The White Paper, therefore, will
outline all the relevant issues surrounding the implementation of the motion,
including the impact on the Branch’s current workplan and any resource issues.
It will provide options regarding the potential for timeline changes and/or
resource adjustments for Committee/Council’s consideration.
2.
If the White Paper is prepared in response to a Standing
Committee motion that has not gone to Council, any recommendations arising from
the White Paper will need to also be approved by Council (as it takes the
Branch away from existing workplans).
Bi-monthly updates on outstanding
items and the estimated target date and status will replace the current
quarterly reporting. This bi-montly
status update will be formally placed on the Committee or Council agenda, at the
second meeting of every second month.
This will be in the form of an information item vs. an information
previously distributed item (so that waiver of the rules of procedure to
discuss the information report is not required).
At the present time, all formal
inquiries and responses are located in a shared area accessible to applicable
staff in the City Clerk's Branch.
Staff understand the benefit of a centralized tracking system for formal
inquiries and are investigating an electronic process in collaboration with the
Information Technology Services Branch.
In the interim, access to all formal inquiries and responses will be
expanded to include the relevant staff in the Mayor's office, departmental
offices and members of Council and their staff.
It is anticipated that this will
be in place by the end of the summer.
3. Informal Inquiries from
members of Council to staff
As illustrated in the
presentations to the LRFP Sub-Committee on February 8, 2008, a majority of the
over 14,000 inquiries raised by members of Council are raised through a variety
of means such as verbal or e-mail request directly to the Departmental staff,
through the 3-1-1 system or other venues.
Any inquiry that is not raised through the formal council process is
defined as "informal", and therefore fall under a different process
for intake, action, tracking, reporting and monitoring.
Informal inquiries take a variety
of forms and are presented for a variety of reasons. Forms can range, for
example, from a ‘hallway chat’ to a brief discussion off-line at Council or
Committee to an email sent by elected representatives’ staff to a call to 311
to a formal meeting with an elected representative. Reasons can range, for
example, from constituency casework to information required on an ‘issue of the
day’ to more detailed information required on a staff report prior to
consideration to information required by an elected official wishing to bring a
new policy forward. Most departments have developed internal processes for
responding to informal inquiries from elected representatives, but these are
not consistent across departments, nor do they necessarily account for all
forms of inquiries.
While issues have been raised
generically regarding informal inquiries (slow response times, inconsistent
responses to similar questions, inappropriately sharing responses or not
sharing responses, duplication of effort for cases referred to 311 and the
department head, etc.), it is difficult for staff to recommend a single process
that would be appropriate for all types of informal inquiries.
Further, staff believes that,
given the wide variety of informal inquiries, it would be ineffective to
develop protocols without having a thorough understanding of what is wrong with
what is happening now in each category and what Councillors want and need in
each given category. It is recommended
that, if Council wishes to track informal inquiries, the Member Services
Committee be asked to undertake this work with staff to review current
approaches to informal inquiries (e.g.
casework, policy, etc) and investigate defining categories and establishing
response standards and tracking for informal inquiries Examples of areas that could be examined by
the Members Services Committee include (but are not limited to) the development
of a corporate-wide knowledge database that would provide many functions such
as logging and maintenance, sharing of information for previous like inquiries,
facilitate searching mechanisms and incorporates built-in quality control mechanisms
regarding the reliability of information.
It is believed that once
consultation is undertaken with the Members Services Committee, staff would be
in a better position to further investigate technological options as well as
develop the appropriate processes and protocol to manage those informal
inquiries the Committee recommends be tracked.
Staff direction from Committee/Council
At the February 27, 2008 City
Council meeting, Councillor Hunter identified the need to formalize staff
directions as part of the record of Committee and Council meetings. Immediately following the adoption of this
report by Council, it is recommended that all directions to staff be formally
noted in the minutes.
Staff do not have a
recommendation regarding whether staff direction should be incorporated as part
of the Inquiry/Motion tracking. If Council wishes, it could be captured and
reported on for Council’s information.
As this is an internal matter, no public consultations were required.
There are no financial implications associated with this report.
Document 1: Procedure By-Law (By-Law 2006-462) – Held on file with the City Clerk
Following the adoption of this report, Clerk’s staff will work with Information Technology staff to put the process in place by the fall. Any changes required to the Procedure By-law will be incorporated as part of the Mid-term Governance Review.